thought this night, or what you’ll think tomorrow or the next day when we must get up on our legs and move!”
The general stood up. “Well, then. God bless you, boy. Good night.”
“Good night, sir.”
And, tobacco, brass, boot polish, salt sweat and leather, the man moved away through the grass.
Joby lay for a moment, staring but unable to see where the man had gone.
He swallowed. He wiped his eyes. He cleared his throat. He settled himself. Then, at last, very slowly and firmly, he turned the drum so that it faced up toward the sky.
He lay next to it, his arm around it, feeling the tremor, the touch, the muted thunder as, all the rest of the April night in the year 1862, near the Tennessee River, not far from the Owl Creek, very close to the church named Shiloh, the peach blossoms fell on the drum.
Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!
Hugh Fortnum woke to Saturday’s commotions and lay, eyes shut, savoring each in its turn.
Below, bacon in a skillet; Cynthia waking him with fine cookings instead of cries.
Across the hall, Tom actually taking a shower.
Far off in the bumblebee dragonfly light, whose voice was already damning the weather, the time, and the tides? Mrs. Goodbody? Yes. That Christian giantess, six foot tall with her shoes off, the gardener extraordinary, the octogenarian dietitian and town philosopher.
He rose, unhooked the screen and leaned out to hear her cry, “There! Take that! This’ll fix you! Hah!”
“Happy Saturday, Mrs. Goodbodyl”
The old woman froze in clouds of bug spray pumped from an immense gun.
“Nonsense!” she shouted. “With these fiends and pests to watch for?”
“What kind this time?” called Fortnum.
“I don’t want to shout it to the jaybirds, but”—she glanced suspiciously around—“what would you say if I told you I was the first line of defense concerning flying saucers?”
“Fine,” replied Fortnum. “There’ll be rockets between the worlds any year now.”
“There already are!” She pumped, aiming the spray under the hedge. “There! Take that!”
He pulled his head back in from the fresh day, somehow not as high-spirited as his first response had indicated. Poor soul, Mrs. Goodbody. Always the essence of reason. And now what? Old age?
The doorbell rang.
He grabbed his robe and was half down the stairs when he heard a voice say, “Special delivery. Fortnum?” and saw Cynthia turn from the front door, a small packet in her hand.
“Special-delivery airmail for your son.”
Tom was downstairs like a centipede.
“Wow! That must be from the Great Bayou Novelty Greenhouse!”
“I wish I were as excited about ordinary mail,” observed Fortnum.
“Ordinary?!” Tom ripped the cord and paper wildly. “Don’t you read the back pages of Popular Mechanics? Well, here they are!”
Everyone peered into the small open box.
“Here,” said Fortnum, “what are?”
“The Sylvan Glade Jumbo-Giant Guaranteed Growth Raise-Them-in-Your-Cellar-for-Big-Profit Mushrooms!”
“Oh, of course,” said Fortnum. “How silly of me.”
Cynthia squinted. “Those little teeny bits?”
“‘Fabulous growth in twenty-four hours,’” Tom quoted from memory. “ ‘Plant them in your cellar …’ ”
Fortnum and wife exchanged glances.
“Well,” she admitted, “it’s better than frogs and green snakes.”
“Sure is!” Tom ran.
“Oh, Tom,” said Fortnum lightly.
Tom paused at the cellar door.
“Tom,” said his father. “Next time, fourth-class mail would do fine.”
“Heck,” said Tom. “They must’ve made a mistake, thought I was some rich company. Airmail special, who can afford that?”
The cellar door slammed.
Fortnum, bemused, scanned the wrapper a moment then dropped it into the wastebasket. On his way to the kitchen, he opened the cellar door.
Tom was already on his knees, digging with a hand rake in the dirt.
He felt his wife beside him, breathing softly, looking down into the cool dimness.
“Those are mushrooms, I hope. Not … toadstools?”
Fortnum laughed. “Happy harvest, farmer!”
Tom glanced up and waved.
Fortnum shut the door, took his wife’s arm and walked her out to the kitchen, feeling fine.
Toward noon, Fortnum was driving toward the nearest market when he saw Roger Willis, a fellow Rotarian and a teacher of biology at the town high school, waving urgently from the sidewalk.
Fortnum pulled his car up and opened the door.
“Hi, Roger, give you a lift?”
Willis responded all too eagerly, jumping in and slamming the door.
“Just the man I want to see. I’ve put off calling for days. Could you play psychiatrist for five minutes, God help you?”
Fortnum examined his friend for a moment as he drove quietly on.
“God help you, yes. Shoot.”
Willis sat back and studied his fingernails. “Let’s just drive a moment. There. Okay. Here’s what I want to say: Something’s wrong with the world.”
Fortnum laughed easily. “Hasn’t there always been?”
“No, no, I mean … something strange—something unseen—is happening.”
“Mrs. Goodbody,” said Fortnum, half to himself, and stopped.
“Mrs. Goodbody?”
“This morning, gave me a talk on flying saucers.”
“No.”
